A/N: Read, enjoy, review. Oh, and there's a crossover somewhere. Slight, very, very subtle, and of no actual importance, but I'm curious as to whether any of you get it. Keep an eye out, and make a guess.

Emily

Disclaimer: I don't own Life With Derek, the song "Two Words," or anything else that might be mentioned.

It was cold. This was the first thing that she noticed upon stepping out of the barracks and onto the hard dirt. It was very cold. It was dark, too, but she had expected that. The rooms, the barracks, they were always kept dark. She would have been on alert had it been light. But the cold got to her. In the rooms, the barracks, the training centers, it was never cold. Always warm. They didn't like the cold, just like they didn't like the light. Still, her duties told her to move on, and she did so. Through the glow of a single lamp that towered over the complex, she saw two men (or perhaps, not men) standing by the metal gates.

"Name," one demanded as she approached. In the same light, she caught a glimpse of the scarlet badge on his jacket. No, he was not a man. He and the other were of the superior race.

"Jane 240," she replied.

"Rank and I.D."

"Barrack 601. Human training division," she said, pulling out the card that officiated her.

The two figures that guarded the gates exchanged glances.

"Towards the field. Thirty paces out from the gate. You will patrol there tonight."

She nodded, and walked through the opening gates, her face impassive.

It was her first time to leave the complex. When the superior race had invaded some years ago, she had been one of the lucky humans. When she was just a baby, her parents had been killed, and the invaders had taken her to the complex, where, despite her breed, she had been allowed to train. She would never rise above the post of a minor officer, of course, and she didn't wish to do so. She was inferior, she knew, and eventually, the inferior would all be exterminated, and They would rule.

As she walked, she caught sight of a figure, situated on a bench on the outskirts of the territory. It was her job to find the humans that wished to reform the world back to its former ways, killing off the superior race. What a stupid race, most humans were, she thought. Human emotions were the hallmark of the campaign. Emotions were a thing that was forbidden in the complex, and something that the superior race did not feel. Growing up, she had been taught to feel nothing, to think nothing, and to understand nothing. She did what she was told, and this was it.

As she approached the figure, she pulled out the flier that all human officers and trainees kept on them. She looked up from it, at the human, and put it away; the person on the bench was neither the man nor woman that led the opposition. He was much younger, and he didn't have the same look as they did. He just looked…sad, was the only word she knew to use.

"Human, identify yourself," she commanded, drawing herself up to her full height, the look of perpetual blankness plastered on her face. The man looked up, half of his face illuminated by the dim street lamp, placed on the premises to help those like herself to identify the others.

"Derek," he replied, his voice deep and worn. She frowned at his words.

"I said identify yourself, human," she repeated, coming closer, and feeling a twinge of…something. She couldn't identify it, but she tried to quickly mask it once more, for if They were to find out…

The man seemed not to notice this. His shoulder sagged, and his eyes fell to the ground in a pose of submission.

"Human 1939281, from area 2901," he said after a pause.

There. That was the way that he must have been taught to give his identity. She didn't know what he had meant, saying that word, Derek. She wondered if it had been his name; she was taught in school that once, before the invasion, humans had identified themselves

through actual names, rather than the numbers that now defined each one of them. It had been changed, if she remembered correctly, because giving the humans names would foster their individuality, and that in turn could lead to more revolts. Take away their names, take away their identity. Take away their identity, take away their hope.

"What is your purpose?"

"To sit. To think. To remember." He looked up at her. "Is that illegal now?"

It wasn't, not yet. Soon, it would be, but not quite yet.

She couldn't wait for that day.

"What were you thinking about, human? Speak up," she said harshly.

"The past," he replied. She could now see him clearly, a man, probably in his later years, defeated looking and sad. It was the perfect look for a human to have.

"You are not to think about that. It is a forgotten time," she told him.

"I know. It's just…" he paused, and looked up at her, his face changing expressions, into a look that was…well, she didn't quite know what it was, really. He continued, "have you ever been curious about what it was like?" he finished.

"No," she answered.

"Of course not. Still, you need to know what I'm thinking. You ought to sit down, or stand. Listen for a bit. You're just doing your job, and I'm an older man who just wants to talk."

She looked at him. This was strange; she hadn't been told what to do when something like this happened. She did the only thing she could think of: she stayed silent, staring at the man in an unwavering gaze.

"I was twenty-one when I fell in love," he started. "I don't think that you know what that's like, right?"

"Love is a weak human emotion. I do not feel it."

"We can't help it. This was long ago, before the invasion. This was before…before everything. Or maybe before anything. I don't really know." He paused, looking out as though in some sort of mindless trance.

"Human, you may now speak."

He looked up, startled. "Speak? Oh yes-yes, of course. I think I need to tell you about her, about the girl.

"Casey and I…our relationship wasn't what you would call conventional. We were stepsiblings. Of course, you wouldn't understand that. It means that when we were both fifteen, my dad and her mom married. We didn't like each other, at first. Fought like you wouldn't believe. Things changed, as we got older, of course, but still. Up until college, we fought."

"Stop," the girl demanded. He looked up at her. "You will address her as she is known. You are not to use titles like that."

The man's expression darkened as he looked up at her.

"She didn't have one of those numbers," he said, his voice deeper, louder, and, from what she had been taught, angrier. "She never got one of those numbers. She was never herded into a building, numbered like some livestock. She never had to go through the humiliation, the goddamn branding; being told that she was nothing better than an animal. She escaped it. She escaped it all. She escaped the goddamned thing. I won't call her by a number; Casey was never a number, never something inhuman. She was lucky; she died before it all. Killed by your damned superiors, killed by a nameless animal. But she was lucky, she was the lucky one," he finished, staring her in the eyes, daring her to do something.

Her face stayed impassive, as she had been trained. "You may continue, then, human." Her need for his past, and for whatever information he could reveal outweighed her initial anger at hearing one of the long forgotten names of the humans. He nodded.

"We didn't mean to stay together during college," he started up again. "We didn't plan it; it just sort of happened. I had a good scholarship for hockey, and she just fell in love with the school. I was furious, actually, when I learned that she was going to be going there. Furious. But I got over it. It was always like that; I'd be angry with her, but somehow, I'd get over it.

"I think we kind of grew close because we were lonely. Loneliness is like that-it'll draw people together. Or at least it did, once. I'm not so sure about that anymore. But then, then, we were young, and for the first time, we were alone. I wasn't some big popular kid, and she didn't have a reputation for being the smartest. We were just these nameless faces, and nobody knew or cared who we were. Only we really noticed each other, and I think that's why we became close. We'd see each other, go out for lunch, dinner, whatever. Just so we could talk, or fight, as it usually happened.

"We became closer over time. Eventually, we made new friends. I started to become a somebody as I played in more games. The professors started to notice her later, of course. By the time we were juniors, a few other people noticed us both. Not like we'd been in high school. But it was good enough for us. But we still hung out, still noticed each other, because we always had.

"I don't know when we became involved-romantically, I mean. Sometime during our junior year, the year before it all went to Hell. It might have been around exam time, or maybe I had a big game, and I was nervous. I think it involved alcohol, but I can't be sure. It's funny that I can't even remember a big even like that. I can remember little things-incidents here and there when we were younger, a comment she said once while in my dorm, her standing near my bed with only my jersey on. Little things, not important, really. But I can't remember an even as big as us coming together.

"As for love, well, we weren't in love right away. Or maybe we were always in love, but didn't know it. Love is like that. It takes time, or it did for me. Maybe it wasn't always like that. I can't tell you when I knew I loved her. One day, I just thought, I love this woman, and it seemed natural. Like I'd always said it. Just…natural. I don't know when she knew it, either. We didn't really question it. Didn't tell our parents either. It just never crossed our minds. We were too wrapped up in our own world to pay them much attention.

"It happened when we were seniors. I remember that. I remember it clearly. I was watching TV-we had a lot of them back then. We still have them now, in our areas, but they don't work. Haven't in a long, long time. Last thing I watched on them was a news cast on some disaster-this disaster. Watched a few days after I learned about this all. Just a few days after. Last time. Any ways, I was watching a hockey game-I don't know who was playing. I was watching, and suddenly, she stormed into my apartment. She still lived in the dorms, though I never did understand why. It was just something she did. Never did get a good answer out of her. She was always difficult.

"She came into my apartment, frantic, shaking. I laughed at her. I'd never seen her so upset, and I laughed at her. She was crying, screaming, yelling at me to just change the channel. Change that damn channel! She took the remote, changed the damn channel. I was angry with her. She took it and just changed it. She hadn't done that since we were kids. I was gonna yell at her. Yell like we were younger, because she changed the channel. But she pointed, pointed soundlessly, just crying and pointing and shaking as she looked at the TV screen. I didn't understand at first. She kept whispering, "the shots we got, Derek, the shots." I didn't understand at first. Not until later. Then I did. At first, all I understood was that something was going on in the states. I didn't care, at first. I never really cared much for worldly events, especially not if they weren't in Canada. But it wasn't just the states. Other countries-parts of England, South America, Africa, parts of Asia, the whole damn world, something bad was happening. A flu, a disease. It was changing people, doing something. Killing them. But not all. Some mysterious group had given out vaccinations. We'd gotten them at the college a few weeks before. We never knew what they were, just that it was mandatory. It didn't cross either of our minds to ask. There were just some things that we didn't question. Never questioned. It's a good thing we didn't; could have been bad if we'd backed out.

"I was shocked, and so was Casey. It seemed to be moving north, infecting each area. I don't think it ever really got so bad in Canada, the disease, that is. More south. It didn't like the cold either. Or at least I think that must have been the reason. I didn't know, and neither did she. How could we? Those who had any idea were in hiding, and nobody else knew anything. We just knew it was bad. It was very, very bad, and people were changing.

"The Leafs-that was the team playing. The Leafs. It doesn't matter. It never did, didn't then, doesn't now. I remember, though. They were playing. They were my favorite team, hockey, that is. It doesn't have any meaning to you, of course. I wondered then, I think, if they survived everything. Yes, yes, I wondered that. I always imagined that they did. In truth, they probably died like most others. But I never really thought of them as human, not then. They were some strange group, apart from everyone else, and untouched by human troubles. I just forgot what they were. I still wonder if they survived, even now. But it doesn't really matter. Not these days.

"We called our parents. They were worried, but tried not to be. We were twenty-one, adults, and they were still protecting us. We didn't tell them. It would have been a good time to tell them that we were together, but we failed to tell them. It wasn't like we were coming apart, moving away from each other. We clung tightly to each other those few days. We made love that night, held each other, whispered I love you's for the first time, and accepted the words without hesitation. We both meant them; I don't know if she really knew that I meant them, but I did. I really did. Even if she didn't know, she believed. We both did simply because we had to. We had to believe in each other's words, had to believe in them because everything else we believed in was going to Hell. Every damned aspect was going to Hell. Classes were suddenly cancelled, and the campus started to clear out. We talked to our parents, told them that we were going to leave. Didn't know where, somewhere further north. Said we'd meet them in Alberta, maybe. Somewhere. We had a place set up. I don't remember where it was, but it was set up. It never happened, we never did meet up with them. That was the last time we talked to them. We talked to our siblings, said we'd see them soon, and we never did. Never again.

"Casey and I, we actually fought about whether or not we should go. I wanted to go, leave and get her the hell out of there. It was getting scary. To see a college campus in a time of panic is terrifying, really. It's not empty, but it's still scary. I knew that I wanted us both out of there, and as soon as possible. But Casey, Casey resisted. She was scared, skeptical. Didn't know what to do.

" 'Derek,' she said to me, 'Derek, maybe we're safer here. We don't know what's out there. We should stay.'

"The TV had stopped working at this point. Something happened to the signal, and it was no more. The papers had also stopped being delivered; I imagine everyone had just abandoned their jobs to get the hell out of town. We were close to the States, and that they seemed to be taking the brunt.

"I guess eventually, they got impatient with their disease, and they started to bomb. That's when we left, when they started to bomb. They bombed one of the college buildings, and that was it. It's funny; I looked up, when they dropped the bomb, and it wasn't some flying round thing. It looked like a military plane. I still don't understand it all. I think I know, but how can I be sure? Anyway, that's when we left. That's when we knew we had to get out of there, and go north. We drove part of the way. We needed to be quick. It was a modern exodus, Casey called it. She knew silly things like that.

"Gas, gas was the problem. By the time we left, it was gone. We managed to find enough to take us part of the way, but not all. During the time, while we rode in that car with only a few belongings with us, we talked. I told her I loved her, and I did. We talked about silly things, nothing really. But to us, those nothings were everything. We shared the most trivial things, a childhood memory here, a dream there. Anything we could think of except for the present. We never discussed the present.

"There was a town, this small little town that we stopped in. We had gone off the highway at some point, to avoid all the traffic, you see. There was so much traffic, and Casey hated it. So did I. So, we left the highway and took some back roads. I think we had forgotten about our promise to meet our family. No, wait, no, we hadn't. We were aware of it, but we figured we could still find them, even taking these back roads. We were very silly, back then. Still am, even to this day, sometimes, at least.

"Anyways, we came upon this little town, not so little, you understand, but little enough to be cute. It had been bombed in places, and there weren't any people around that we could see. We were looking to buy gas; they had a gas station, and we were trying to make the pump work. A man came up to us, appearing out of nowhere.

" 'I'm John,' he told us. He was the minister of a church. He helped us. Before he could leave, I stopped him.

" 'Can you marry us?' I asked. Casey looked up at me just shocked. She never expected me to ask that. To be honest, I didn't either.

" 'Derek?' she questioned, looking up at me with those blue eyes-those damned blue eyes. I never could refuse them after I fell in love with her. You can't understand this; I can't really understand it myself, come to think of it. It's just one of those things. You just can't understand it, couldn't then, can't now. When she looked up at me like that, I went to my knees. It was cold, and the ground was covered in snow. Oh, yes, I forgot; you don't know what snow is, do you? I won't explain it. Can't, actually. It's just something you can't really describe these days. But I kneeled in the snow, and I looked up at her.

" 'Marry me,' I repeated. It seemed so easy to me; we should be married. I loved her, she loved me, and life was going to hell. We needed to marry. What's more is I wanted to marry her. I wanted it all. This was very sudden; I don't think that I ever thought about it before that moment. But after I said it, I couldn't imagine not saying it, and not wanting it. It seemed so natural to me. It was just like loving her; I couldn't say when the desire began, but once it had begun, I couldn't stop it. I think she understood it all, because I never said anything else, and she only said yes. Oh, we cried, both of us. We hugged, kissed, cried. It was a moment of joy for me, and for her. Even the demolished building seemed merrier for a moment.

"The church wasn't far, and it wasn't big. There was nothing formal about it. Hell, it might not have been so much legal, for all I know. But the times were strange, and exceptions were made, and we were married.

"We didn't have anything to celebrate. No champagne, no reception, nothing. We didn't even really have anything with the wedding. But still, when we walked outside, I took her in my arms. We danced. It was cold-very cold. Snow was on the ground, and we danced over it. She sang to me, whispered the words of a song into my ear…" The man trailed off once more.

" 'Facing you who brings me new tomorrow, I thank God for yesterdays…' " he whispered quietly. He paused, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a cigarette. He looked at her, and she nodded; smoking was not illegal.

"I didn't smoke before. Oh, well, I guess a few times in high school and college. But not with Casey. She would never have allowed me to smoke. She would have killed me. Still would, if she could now. But I digress. Now, what was I talking about? Oh, right, right. Our marriage.

"For a moment, we forgot everything. For a moment, we were in a reception hall. Her mother was crying, my father was proud, our brother and sisters were standing around, even Marti silent, and we were holding each other tight, and she was in a white gown, and I in a suit, and I could hold her bare skin, not feel the layers of her jacket, and there was only the sound of the band, playing, and we were whirling around. And we were in a world where nothing existed, where there was only us two. We were together, and although it was very cold, and although we had no music, we only had the crunch of the snow beneath our feet, the sound of distant cries, the shell of a burnt out building, we were together, we were alive

" 'No trace of sadness, always with gladness…I do…'

"We went on, and it was all different. We felt different, or I did, at least. I can't speak for Casey; she used to hate it when I spoke for her. 'I'm independent,' she'd say. She was into all of the women's rights stuff. I wasn't so much, but I let her have that. It didn't come up after we were married. I didn't really know what she was going to do, to be honest. Was I just 'the husband,' or was she 'Mrs. Venturi?'

"We ran out of gas just as we came to this community. It was made up of a bunch of people like us, scared, and looking for shelter. They had settled in this town. A lot of them had lived there before everything. A lot hadn't. It didn't matter; it was a place to go. We had tried to find our family, but we couldn't. We figured they had to leave. I still figure that's what happened; if you try to think otherwise, you'll drive yourself crazy.

"They welcomed the Venturi's. Yes, she called herself by my last name. I was so happy about that. So, so happy to hear her say it. She smiled proudly too, when she mentioned it. She was actually proud of it, proud of me. I was even prouder. We must have looked like idiots, the first time we introduced ourselves. She smiled at me, I smiled back at her, and we just grinned like a couple of fools. People understood, though. They just smiled politely, and welcomed us.

"You see, in a place like this, it was set up very simply. Everyone lived as one. Nobody kept things for themselves, in theory, at least. Everyone actually did; you had to be crazy not to have something that nobody else had. Crazy. We learned that quickly. But it was all right. We learned that you had to rely on people, you had to rely on the idea that everyone was together, but yet, you could never trust anyone else. I only trusted Casey, and she only trusted me. The times were just…well, we couldn't trust others. We could only rely on them. I guess that's sort of trusting, but not really. Every time we would rely on somebody, we would expect betrayal. I imagine that's how everyone felt. Now, betrayal to whom, I don't quite know. Who would 'spies' report to? We still didn't know who was the enemy. Government? Foreign nation? Aliens? Honestly, the last seemed more likely than anything else. I don't know why it did. It just sort of did. Just like everything else, it just was.

"We found out she was pregnant a few weeks after we came. I don't know how many exactly it was, but it was a while. Four, maybe, or six. Something like that. We were sure, though. There was still a drugstore, and those tests didn't run out so quickly. There was a doctor, too. He told us it was true. She was pregnant.

'My wife, Casey, Pregnant! At a time like this, to find out she was having a baby. It wasn't that I didn't want a baby; I did. I had decided that I wanted kids with her. I wanted to be a father, and have a wife and the whole domestic set up. Maybe I'd even convince her to get a dog. But right then, when everything was so screwed up? No, then wasn't the right time. I wanted them later. You see, I still thought that it would blow over. It was crazy, but I think we all kind of thought that way. We all looked at the whole thing as a sort of movie. There had to be an end, and then, everything would be back to normal, and we would live our lives again. It was silly to hold onto this idea, I know that. We knew that. But we couldn't really help it. Our minds just grasped onto this concept that it wasn't real. Nothing was actually real. I still thought that later, after everything, we could have a baby. That was my first thought when I knew. I actually thought, not now! In a couple of years, when we're older, when this is over.

"It's silly, I know. 'Course, most everything probably sounds silly to you now. It wasn't then. We had to live in denial if we were to live at all. We couldn't think about what if this doesn't end, what if they conquer us. We had to think what will we do when this all ends. Thinking about it in terms of permanence was something that would drive you absolutely crazy. So, we didn't think about it like that. Never could. Not until later, at least.

"Finding a place to live, well, that was the hard part. The community was small, and everyone was private. We all looked out for ourselves, you know. It was tough trying to find a place to sleep. We were lucky; a family had moved out, gone to their own family further north. Yeah, I know I said that we were going north. We were. But we had just kind of lost track of where we were. For all I knew, we could have moved south, and been near the boarder. We had never heard of the town, and it never crossed our minds to ask. We were too busy. Things were starting to sink in, and we were finally starting to realize the life was quite possibly going to hell.

"When I was young, real young, five or six at most, when the power would go off, I'd gather up all of the pillows and couch cushions and blankets I could find, and using the couch and the coffee table, I would make an elaborate 'fort' of sorts. It wasn't really elaborate, of course. I was too young for that. But to a kid, it was a palace. I would disappear into my little fort, crawl under and lie on my stomach because it was too low to sit up in, and I'd have my flashlight, and I'd just flip through my books, and look at the pictures, and try to make up a story. Or sometimes, I'd pretend that I was hiding from some big evil, and that I was the triumphant hero. Now, living with Casey, married and in hiding, I felt like a kid again sometimes. The power was long gone. Luckily, the water wasn't connected to the power, and it kept running. We'd all be screwed if it didn't. Casey and I, we'd sometimes just curl up under a blanket or two. Once, I even made a little clubhouse, yes, that's what I called it when I was young, a clubhouse. Anyways, we'd hid under it one afternoon, laughing like you wouldn't believe, and acting like two little kids. We were, too, for that moment. Casey wasn't too far along yet. A couple of months, maybe. Couldn't really know for sure; the doctor wasn't all that great, and he didn't have what he claimed to need to figure out how far along Casey was.

"Eventually, another couple moved into the house with us. We didn't have our time together anymore, not like those couple of weeks. But we still slept together, stayed and loved each other. We didn't know the couple well, yet I could tell you what they liked, what cigarettes he smoked, what she liked to wear. But I can't tell you their names; never cared to learn them, though they must have told us them once. Casey would probably remember. I once referred to him as 'that dude, you know, the one who looks like a used car salesman?' She yelled at me for that, telling me that I should know who they were, that they were nice people, all that stuff. But she also smiled a bit, because she thought the same exact thing.

"Looking back, I think we must have been further up North, because everyday, people would stream through. They rarely stayed, but there were so many. Sometimes, you could only see this endless stream of people and cars. As time went on, we saw fewer cars. Even in the beginning there weren't many. No gas, no cars. But we'd see the people. They'd walk. Just walk, carrying the few things they could. Old, young, it didn't matter. They just walked on. Some rode in pick-up trucks. We'd see a lot of that, people just hitching a ride. A few times, people had hooked up their horses to carts and rode in on carts. It was weird to see it all. Just so…medieval, I guess.

"Casey, she found it disturbing. 'Derek,' she said to me, 'it's like we're going back in time, back to the age of pilgrimage. But…' she'd trail off, scared, confused, and not sure what else she could actually say. I would just hold her tighter, and we'd watch. Just watch, observe. Sometimes, we'd play with the kids of the refugees while they talked with the others in the town. We weren't really for all of that political mess. We didn't care. We just wanted peace.

"We looked for our family, of course. When the people came in, everyone in the community always greeted them. We would thrust posters in their faces, asking and begging, 'have you seen her? Have you seen him? Please, ask! Look! Anything!' Most of the time, they wouldn't know what we were talking about. People were too busy trying to stay alive to look for others. Once in a while, someone would get lucky, and someone would recognize his or her friend or family member. I say lucky, but I don't really mean it. Mostly, when that happened, the person they'd been looking for was dead. Casey and I, we were no different. We had some pictures, though we never could make copies, and we would wave those around. We would ask if anyone had heard anything-anything- about London (where we lived once), or about the members of our family. We'd tell them, 'tell them we're okay! Casey and Derek Venturi are all right!' We figured that if they heard my last name with her first name, they'd realize we were married. Sometimes, we'd add, 'tell them the baby is fine!' just as a reminder.

"I don't know if they ever knew, if they were ever told. Hell, I don't even know if they are alive. Probably not. Not many people survived. But some did. It doesn't matter. It's probably better to be dead, anyways. Still, no one ever gave us anything. They were too occupied with fleeing and surviving to care much for anyone else. I can't blame them. I only really cared for Casey and the baby.

"Once, I thought I saw her sister, my step-sister, Lizzie. It was only for a moment that I thought it was her, though. It was one day when a group of women entered. There were a couple of men, but mainly, it was all women. And what horrible women they were. They were dirtier than most of the others who came in, and dressed worse, too. Their clothes were ripped, bearing their arms, chest, everything barely covered. They were battered, bruised, and the most unfortunate looking group of people that I'd ever seen. A few of them stumbled over to the nearest man, lifting up their skirts, pulling at their shirts to reveal their breasts. They were whores, women trying to survive on what they could get from sleeping with others.

"Some of them were very young. A few looked fifteen, maybe even fourteen. A lot were older, but some were just so young, and so pathetic and disgusting. But in that group, for a moment, I thought I saw Lizzie. It was a girl, eighteen or nineteen, maybe. But it wasn't Lizzie, it couldn't have been. When I looked at her, she didn't remember me, and Lizzie would have. She smiled dumbly, a gummy smile, as she was missing most of her teeth. An older woman, a terrible and crude woman, came up to me.

" 'Like what ye' see?' she asked. 'Girlie's been struck dumb-saw her family killed. Musta knocked her brains around a bit, 'cause she don't think quite right or act quite right. Aint much t' look at now, ya see, but she's a good girl, that one. Cheap too. Clean 'er up and she won't be too much trouble for ya. Quiet and obedient, and a good girlie. '

"Of course, I didn't reply. I walked away from the horrible sight. I turned back once, though. I saw her looking at me, with that haunted look, and for a minute, I thought I actually saw something in those eyes, something alive. But I looked again, and it wasn't there, and I think I imagined it. I never told Casey, because I knew that she would over react, and she would go and look, and get it into her head that it was Lizzie I saw. It wasn't, couldn't have been. Not Lizzie. So I never told her.

"I told you before that Casey and I didn't really talk much to the people. That isn't entirely true; it started to change when the reports of the massacres started to roll in.

"The massacres. Maybe that isn't the right word. It wasn't really a massacre in that the people were being killed hands on. I'm not actually sure if that's the real meaning of a massacre, but that's what I've always thought of when I think massacre. Anyways, it started out as a report here and there. Towns were being bombed, nothing new there. That was commonplace. What was different was that some places weren't being bombed. Men would come in, and the pregnant women were killed, and their babies or fetuses taken. Just taken, gone. That might have been a rumor, of course. More common, and probably more accurate were the reports that planes or something would fly over villages, but not bomb. Just fly over. Within a week, any pregnant women miscarried, had still born babies, or, in some cases, had their infants die. I think it also sterilized a lot of people, but I'm not quite sure. All I know is that the reports grew more numerous each day, and that's when Casey and I got into the argument.

"It's still funny, and strange, looking back. When the reports became more numerous, we both got scared. Real scared. After all, Casey was oh, I'd say four, five months along and she was starting to show. People who came through were starting to give her sympathetic glances, like they were thinking, 'that poor girl. Soon, she won't even have the baby.' Casey of course wouldn't have this, and she finally decided that we should leave.

"You see, along with all the other reports, there was some positive news. I'm going to tell you this now because it's no longer true. They've moved, and I have no idea where they are now. But then, the radicals, that family that leads it all, man, woman, and their kid, they were all gathered in the mountains. A lot of people were moving to join them. They were the ones, people said, who sent out the vaccines. They knew about it in advanced, but nobody would listen. They just knew stuff, and they could protect us. I don't know much else except that if anyone could be safe, that was the place to go, and Casey wanted to go.

" 'Derek, we can't just sit around here! They'll eventually come after us, and probably really soon. We can't wait for them and hope that they don't; it won't work like that. We have to leave, try to get to the place, try to do something. Derek, I can't sit here anymore!'

" 'Casey, we can't leave while you're pregnant,' I told her. 'We can't risk it. How would we get there? We'd have to walk, and you can't go all that way while pregnant.'

" 'It's summer, Derek, we'll make it. We're more in danger here than if we're moving, anyways,' she argued. It was a good argument; she was always good at arguing. Even as kids, she was good. But so was I. So was I.

" 'Case, we can wait. Just another few months, 'til after the baby's born. Then we can go, once it's a few months old.' I didn't want to leave, didn't want to risk anything. This was funny, really. I was always the risk taker, the impulsive and impatient one who took risks, took action, never waited. She was the cautious one, the nervous one. She was never calm, always a nervous wreck. I was the one who was always so damn calm. But now, it's like the roles had changed, and suddenly, she was rational, calm, thinking, and I wasn't.

" 'It will always be later, Derek. Later, when the baby's older, later, when it's a bit older still. No, Derek! If we don't go now, we won't have a baby to wait for.'

"I gave in; I had to, she was too strong. I couldn't stand up against her; I couldn't keep insisting that we stay, because she was right. So, we left. We left a week later, hitching a ride on the back of a pickup truck belonging to some sympathetic man. He was going there, too. Eventually, the truck ran out of gas, and we had to walk.

We were on the road a few weeks. About, oh, I'd say two of them had been spent walking. We didn't have much with us; a few bags that I carried. Casey carried one or two; she wouldn't let anyone else help. People were real nice to her because she was pregnant. They shared food, shelter, rides if they had them. Real nice people.

"It rained the last week, and at one point, she slipped. Nothing serious; it wasn't bad, just her being clumsy. Still, I couldn't help myself. She looked funny, wiping her face of, looking like the creature from the black lagoon. She still looked beautiful; she had a bandanna keeping her hair out of her face, an oversized t-shirt she borrowed from someone (people lost a lot of weight, and would give their clothes that were now too small to Casey). It was a hard week, and I couldn't help it, and I laughed. Her eyes were sparkling as she looked at me.

" 'Don't we look like the perfect refugee,' I said.

" 'Shut up…'

"Derek. Derek is what she would have said, should have said. It's what she meant to say, at any rate. Those two words, shut up, they didn't mean much without the 'Derek.' She said my name funny, especially then. She wasn't mad when she said it; she was smiling, like she always did, and when she said 'Derek,' you could hear her smile. But without the 'Derek,' those two words meant nothing. But at that moment, as the bomb whistled through the sky, as it crashed down, those two words had to mean something, because she never said 'Derek.' She didn't say it; she only said those two words. Two words, and then she didn't speak again.

"I'd never heard a bomb go off so close, or seen one so close. I can't really remember much because it blew me away. Threw me back, on the ground. Knocked me out, broke a couple of bones, I think. I can't remember so well. I do remember that I woke up, and people were crying, but I couldn't hear her crying. I knew her cry, and I couldn't hear it. That's what scared me the most. It didn't matter that I was hurt, bleeding, probably, hurting like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't hear her crying, and so I got up, and I looked, and I found her.

"She was still, very still, and very pale. I could see that she was pale even through the mud and the dirt and the blood that was covering her face. There was so much blood, so much, and I couldn't even see most of her body. She wasn't moving, and suddenly I was crying, and I was trying to hold her but I couldn't, my arm was broken, and I think I fell down beside her, and I cried. People were standing around me, those who were still alive coming to see if anyone had actually survived, and they were shaking their heads, looking down at me with sympathy. I think I passed out, because next thing I remember was being on a truck, bandaged and going into some town. I didn't get to bury her, or bury my baby. I didn't even see my baby; it was too soon, and it was too mangled, everything was too mangled to tell. Maybe her face was too, though I just always remember her face being whole and very, very pale.

"The rest doesn't matter much. I moved around, place to place. I didn't look for my family anymore; didn't really care much. I was just another refugee, hollow and ruined and pathetic. I still am, still am. I used to doubt if I was worthy of living, but I don't now. Now, I think it would be more than I deserve to die. I'm just not worthy of it. You understand, then, I guess. I don't know what my point was; I'm an old man, can't remember much."

The man looked up at her, his eyes wet with…oh, what was it…oh yes, tears was the word. They were tears. Felt when a human was sad (another silly emotion, she thought).

"You have told me nothing new."

He shrugged. "I guess not. Thought maybe I could…well, no, I didn't." He gave her a grim smile. "I don't regret loving her, for the most part. It actually does vary day to day. Today, I don't. I love those memories. Tomorrow, I might hate them, and try to drink them away."

"They are right. They are always right. One day, They will rule, and the world will be good. You and I will be gone, and all will be right," she told him without emotion, as she was trained to do. He nodded.

"Guess so."

She turned from him in dismissal. He wasn't a threat, and it was time for her to look around in other areas. As she walked away, she didn't look back, didn't think back. Nothing had changed. He was only a human, and they were only words.

And the air was still cold, and it was still dark, and humans were still stupid creatures.

And when she arrived back at the complex, when she stood straight as the two Superiors demanded her report of the night, she wouldn't remember, wouldn't think about it. Only for a moment did she think about it, think about the man. Only long enough to say two words.

"No action."

Just two words, and then she didn't remember any more.

A/N: Well, how cliché would it have been to give Casey some touching last words, or to kill Derek off? What fun would that be?

And oddly enough, I had never read Orwell's 1984 when I wrote the first thousand words. It played absolutely no role in the setup of the story. All similarities are coincidental.

Guess the crossover? No? Yes? Maybe? Take a shot. I'll give you a hint: It's not 1984. It's TV. There. Now, go and leave a review and tell me how awful I am. Or, less likely, that you liked it. Either way, I just want the review.

Note: Song lyrics from "Two Words" by Lea Salonga. Yeah, so Casey probably would never have heard of her. Work with me -its not as though I listen to popular music. And I really don't know if The Leafs are a Canadian hockey team. So, I guessed, and that's that.

Now, review :)

Emily

Post Note:
Thought I ought to mention that I have posted a link to the song "Two Words." Check it out-it is absolutely gorgeous live, and I can promise you that you will not find it on any means of getting music. I suppose that's what I get for listening to obscure musical artists.

Anyways, go check it out!